College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China.
State-owned HouZhenZi Ecological Experimental Forest Farm of ZhouZhi County, Shaanxi 710000, China.
Ultrason Sonochem. 2023 Feb;93:106310. doi: 10.1016/j.ultsonch.2023.106310. Epub 2023 Jan 23.
Seed germination is an essential biological process for establishing new organisms of higher plants, it is especially significant for those aged seeds stored in gene banks for years. In this study, we investigated ultrasound treatment induced germination for aged Pinus tabuliformis seeds, which has been used in large scale aircraft sowing based afforestation in North China over 30 years' ago without knowing possible mechanisms. We showed certain strength of ultrasound could increase the germination rate of aged seeds for about 3 times compare with control. Interestingly, although our transcriptome and lipidome analysis showed the differences between control and ultrasound treatments can be observed 1 day after germination by partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLSDA) analysis, majority (75 % or 69 %) of the significantly altered genes or lipids were commonly shared between them. Further analysis for the commonly altered lipids between both treatments showed ultrasound provoked the variations of lipids during germination process. Our investigation also revealed large amount of ultrasound-related genes and lipids that might be involved in germination promotion process. We hypothesis ultrasound provokes seed lipidome which further increases seed germination of Pinus tabuliformis. Our study provides new insides into the role of ultrasound induced lipidome change in seed germination. Moreover, we provide a new method to improve germination of aged seeds which might benefit preservation of seeds in gene banks.
种子萌发是高等植物建立新生物体的一个基本生物学过程，对于那些在基因库中储存多年的陈年老种子来说尤为重要。在这项研究中，我们研究了超声波处理对陈化的油松种子萌发的诱导作用，三十多年前，在中国北方大规模的飞机播种造林中就已经使用了这种方法，但我们并不清楚其可能的机制。我们发现，一定强度的超声波可以将陈化种子的萌发率提高约 3 倍，与对照组相比。有趣的是，尽管我们的转录组和脂质组分析显示，在萌发后第 1 天，通过偏最小二乘判别分析（PLSDA）分析可以观察到对照组和超声处理组之间的差异，但大部分（75%或 69%）显著改变的基因或脂质在两组之间是共有的。对两种处理方法共有的脂质进行进一步分析表明，超声波在萌发过程中引起了脂质的变化。我们的研究还揭示了大量与超声相关的基因和脂质，它们可能参与了种子萌发的促进过程。我们假设超声波引起种子脂质组的变化，从而进一步促进油松种子的萌发。本研究为超声诱导的脂质组变化在种子萌发中的作用提供了新的见解。此外，我们提供了一种提高陈年老种子萌发率的新方法，这可能有助于基因库中种子的保存。
